The Pirate Bay Is A Trailblazer In Technical Resilience

The Pirate Bay is a site that has remained online for ten years come this summer, despite attempts from almost every Ancient-Power-That-Be to shut it down. It has often been said that The Pirate Bay hasn’t evolved much at all in the past five years; I disagree, it has adapted and overcome everything thrown in its path. There may soon come a time when we need to learn from its experiences in resilience just to safeguard freedom of speech.

The Pirate Bay went through a user-interface redesign some time late 2005 or early 2006, when it went multilingual, and has remained fairly constant since then. The only other site in the world’s top 100 that has remained similarly consistent could possibly be Wikipedia; for every other site, it’s a necessity to evolve, modernize, and meet new user demands.

It is not without irony that Hollywood’s nemesis number one in distribution technology hasn’t innovated in user experience in almost ten years, and still outcompetes the copyright industry hands down when it comes to who provides better service.

But I would argue that The Pirate Bay has been remarkably innovative, just not in the user experience field – a lot of other sites are blazing that trail. Rather, The Pirate Bay has been a trailblazer in resilience. After all, a number of bought-and-paid-for or just plain misguided legislatures and courts have tried to eradicate the site, and yet, it still stands untouched.

As the freedom-of-speech wars escalate, we will need to start taking cues from what The Pirate Bay has learned in the art of staying online, and that time may be approaching fast. This was never a war over the copyright monopoly; it was a war over the concept of the letter as such, over the right to communicate in private, over the right to publish and broadcast ideas that somebody else wouldn’t like the world to see or hear.

For this is what we see – the techniques originally used to attempt silencing The Pirate Bay have already come to be used against activists trying to highlight abuse of power, and corporations and others are trying the might-makes-right approach. You have the example with Greenpeace’s protest site being silenced in the exact same way by an oil company, just to take one example among many.

There is the idea among people with money and power that they have the right to control what other people can say about them. Unfortunately, they are starting to enforce that idea with what amounts to mafia tactics, using the threat of courtrooms as their battlefield, and using intimidation to squelch dissent. (The Pirate Bay themselves were victims of law in this very manner.)

As this war on freedom of speech escalates, we would do well to study the methods for staying online that The Pirate Bay has pioneered.

Rick Falkvinge

Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. He works as Head of Privacy at the no-log VPN provider Private Internet Access; with his other 40 hours, he's developing an enterprise grade bitcoin wallet and HR system for activism.

Discussion

Anonymous

March 23, 2013

regardless of what TPB is and regardless of what we think it is and what it stands for, what it represents, no one, absolutely no one in a position of power has stood by those that founded it. all have praised and condoned what those behind it stood for, what they achieved, but as soon as they needed backing, they were not only let down, they were stitched up! the court cases they have attended have been complete shams! the charges nothing but trumped up lies! the judges involved have been bias from the very beginning and given out rulings that they have been told to give. even the ruling from the EUCHR is a fucking joke, putting profits before people and non-EU people at that! and the whole reason behind the lot is the fear of doing anything that the USA doesn’t like because they are so protective of an industry that refuses to join the digital age to the extent that it already knows it should and also refuses to listen to what customers want, preferring to sue them out of existence instead! the USA has bullied as is still bullying countries into doing what it says and countries are complying, even when the only benefits are, in the main, going to the USA. the one thing that countries ‘doing as the USA says’ actually gain, if they are lucky, is being left off of the dreaded USA 301 list and we all know what a disaster it is to be on that list, dont we. no included country can survive for more than a minute, being totally rebuffed by all nations who refuse to trade with them ever again!! duh!! give me strength!!

Clocky

March 24, 2013

OK calm down now a bit.Exaggerating doesn’t help you or the Piratebayposse who by the way definitively broke a lot of laws and rules, so the fact that they got sentenced is nothing to get upset about.

steelneck

March 24, 2013

Once again, i have repeated this a number of times since way back, but it looks that it cannot be written too many times:

What the Internet has meant is the same as the printing press once did, a dramatic reduction of the barrier to spread information. But unfortunately, the “power and the church” of today act just as they did back in the times of Gutenberg.

The American Liberation Coalition

December 12, 2013

The Church has been a hinderance since its creation. If we had, had the power to resist such foolish and rediculious notions of there belifs we could possible be living in a much more futuristic world. Remember when we were kids we were told by the year 2000 we would have flying cars well it boils down to religious restraint. Luckily they havnt hindered science completely and we have had some good breakthroughs but If we get rid of the church we get rid of the problem. They used to kill people that would step out of there way of doing things. Most of the woman accused obeing a withc was just a social outcast.

The piratebay stands for all of us who are forcibly controlled by a god fearing world of people. Those who they don’t control or cant they get rid of or try. TPB is the representation of true freedom away from all the religious bullshit and political propaganda a place where we can share things we enjoy but couldn’t technically afford because corrupt corporations have established a national finance standard that’s so high that most people who can only afford to are those with decent jobs while the others try to live off minimum wage cuz that’s the best they can seem to get because all of the good jobs required them to have went to collage.

The whole system is corrupt just like it always has been the weak are stamped out and the strong prevail. The so called Jesus is wrong the weak will never prevail because evil always was and always has been the stronger force.

steelneck

March 24, 2013

A-men Anonymous! The big problem basically boils down to balance of power. Without it we have droves of apparatniks who just obey their believed masters, small well dressed little puppies. It is late now, where are those who could step up on the other side of the balance to weigh things up? I guess those organizations also are populated by small apparatniks without the slightest thread of responsibility, just doing what they are told to.

considering the lack of support for, not just TPB and the founders, but for all freedoms and privacy’s from the EU down to individual politicians, i am inclined to think that no one is interested in anything other than going back to the days of 50-150+years ago, when the money ruled and the ordinary people had no rights at all. this is the sort of thing that Hitler was opposed for but Germany seems to be getting now without firing a shot! all EU countries seem to be governed by and adhere to what Merkel says. perhaps someone can explain to me why it is that she is making decisions for all of the EU? why it is that she seems to have taken charge and everyone is letting her do what she wants, regardless of the consequences to everywhere else?

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